by Philip Reeve
The dry ship shuddered. From somewhere on the decks above came a huge crash, followed by the lesser sounds of debris falling. Dust drizzled down between the planks of the roof, settling on the pancakes like cinnamon.
“They found our range, I see,” said Borglum.
“Took ’em long enough, the amateurs,” grumbled Master Fenster.
Roundshot hammered the old hull with a sound like drumbeats.
“Don’t fret,” called Borglum, above the racket. “Won’t last much longer. We’d best be ready.”
“What for?” asked Lady Midnight, and her voice was suddenly too loud, for the bombardment had stopped.
They all ran to the stairs and up on to the roof, where the washing still hung unharmed. Fever crowded with the others to the old ship’s gunwale. Behind the veils of brownish smoke which shrouded Three Dry Ships, engines were roaring and huge shapes moved: Andringa’s landships were rolling through the town and heading out across the old seabed to meet the enemy. Behind them jogged squads of infantry, and the sunlight breaking through the smoke-clouds lit glints on the bayonets of their Bugharin rifles like little silver flames. In front strode squads of Stalkers, some with their claws unsheathed, others revving the engines of their battle-strimmers, their heads swinging from side to side as they searched the smoke for northerners. Officers ran ahead of them, bright swords upraised, shouting them on. Their banners blew sideways on the morning breeze, and as the breeze strengthened the smoke was drawn aside like a curtain and through the last rags and frayings of it Fever saw the Arkhangelsk vanguard rolling south.
“Now the ball begins,” said Borglum.
A line of Arkhangelsk landships was advancing to meet the Londoners. Behind it, the big fortresses had finally crept into range and started firing their cannon, but none of their shots reached Three Dry Ships. They burst instead among the London landships, trying to knock out a few before the two lines met. Already Andringa’s Stalkers had broken into a run. One group of them reached the bows of an Arkhangelsk ship and went swarming up its steep sides like insects, burrowing in through gun-ports and hawse-holes, or scrambling all the way up to attack the gunners on the open upper deck. That landship skewed aside, losing speed, but the rest came on, and within a few minutes they met the London ships, and the two lines disappeared again, engulfed in a spitting grey-white fog pierced through and through with flame.
“There are so many of them!” Fever said.
There were at least two Arkhangelsk ships for every Londoner, and the Arkhangelsk were bigger, with three or four decks and huge turrets jutting from their flanks, stubbled with cannon-barrels. But the London ships were faster, and tougher, and their guns fired more quickly, while on their upper decks sharpshooters kept up a steady crackle of rifle fire, cutting down any Arkhangelsk who dared show their faces over the parapets of their ships.
“Just like Hill 60,” said Borglum, who’d watched that battle from a distance, too. “Maybe this Andringa can hold them. . .”
In early afternoon Tharp came to fetch Cluny Morvish from the chamber they had given her. “What’s happening?” she asked him, as she trailed after him down the winding stairways of the heart-fortress. “We are not making another assault, surely?”
Half a dozen times that day Tharp had made her go and stand among the blowing banners up on the heart-fort’s forward bastion, where the men could see her as they readied themselves to charge into the wall of smoke and noise that hung in front of that long hill to southward. “They will fight better knowing that the Vessel of the Ancestors is watching them,” the old man had promised, while the war horns brayed and the drums thrummed and the attack-ships revved their engines. But each time the survivors had come back beaten; shot-holed vehicles dragging themselves along like escapees from a scrapyard; the wounded men draped on their upperworks like broken dolls.
“Are we losing?” she asked Tharp, hurrying along with no idea where he was taking her.
“The Movement are strong,” the old man said. “They have stronger forts and better guns. But we shall break their line. . .”
Cluny shuddered. London kept rising in her mind, driving all the other thoughts into the corners. In the wilds, with Fever Crumb, she had thought that she was learning to cope with the visions, but now they seemed worse than ever.
“The Great Carn has ordered an all-out attack,” Tharp was saying. “We will advance with our whole force; forts, warriors, mammoths. And you shall lead us.”
“Me?”
“Your presence will show our warriors that the Ancestors are still with us. Some are beginning to doubt it.”
I’m not surprised, thought Cluny. I doubt it myself. She dared not say that to the Technomancer, and so she said instead, “What if I’m killed? What will that show them?”
“The Ancestors will not allow that,” Tharp said. “You will ride on the Great Carn’s own war-mammoth, and I shall be with you, chanting apps of power which will make the bullets of the southerners turn to mist before they touch you. Not only that; the Great Carn has given you a bodyguard. Here. We have gained something at least from this flirtation with Raven.”
The room he led her into was long and low; an afterthought of a room squeezed in between two of the fortress’s engines and hot as June. Cluny had seen enough now of the Movement to know that the two men who waited there in their red robes were Raven’s technomancers. One of their Stalkers waited with them, armoured and faceless, unmoving except for the faintly flickering glow of the green lamps which were his eyes. Words that Cluny could not read were stencilled on his chest and shoulder pads and across his massive, metal brow. She looked at his big hands and thought of the blades that were housed inside them. He was a veteran, his armour scarred with dents and scratches, and she thought, This might be the very one that killed my brother. . .
“He will protect you,” promised Tharp, sensing her unease. “These technomancers of the Movement have sung strong apps to him; they have told him that his only purpose is to do your bidding and to keep you safe.”
Cluny was not certain what she was supposed to say. “Thank you,” she told the men in red. She said it to the Stalker too, but he only looked at her.
Tharp said, “They call him Master Shrike.”
At first the battle had been terrifying. Soon it began to drag. On Dryships Hill even the birds grew used to the noise and began to sing again; Fever could hear them whenever there was a pause in the firing, and see them flitting between the gorse bushes. Now and then the ground jerked as another landship blew up. For the most part it seemed to be the northerners who were suffering; Fever could count twenty of their ships wrecked and burning for only a few of London’s. One had kept moving long after its crew were dead; a massive, self-propelled pyre which lumbered through the battle and ploughed into the sheds at the outskirts of the town before its engines finally gave out. Through its smoke she watched Suomi infantry pushing forward behind shield-walls on the eastern flank. High screens of armoured timber, mounted on wheels and propelled at walking pace by crude steam engines, the shield-walls had worked well against terrified snowmad tribesmen, but London’s guns punched through them as if they were wet cardboard, and the Suomi fled.
But Andringa had no reserves, and when one of his landships was captured or destroyed it left a gap in his line, while the ships his enemies lost were replaced by others pushing in from the north. Nor could the Londoner’s armour protect them from the northern Stalkers, which climbed in through their gun-ports to slaughter their crews, while from the gun-ports of some Arkhangelsk ships long whips of lightning struck down their own Stalkers, crackling like frost as they wrapped around the iron men. And some of the ships in the northern line were Raven’s, as fast and strong as anything from London, and when one of those rolled forward a long, terrible duel began, with no predicting which ship would win.
In mid-afternoon, with the sun glaring through the smoke like a red-hot penny, the line broke and the remnants of the London fleet came crawling
backwards to Three Dry Ships, the surviving infantry and Stalkers running between them.
“That’s it,” said Borglum. He started to shoo his people away from the old ship’s side, herding them towards the stair-head. “Come on. Show’s over. We got to get ourselves aboard one of those things and pray it’s faster than anything the Arkies have got.”
“Are they running?” asked Fever, running herself as she followed him down the stairs again.
“All the way to the sea, if they’ve got any sense,” said Lady Midnight, coming down behind.
But Andringa and his men must have had no sense at all, or else they thought there was no point in running from the Arkhangelsk. As the misshapes neared the bottom of the stairs they found themselves shouldered aside by soldiers coming up; soldiers with blackened faces and wide, shocked eyes, Bugharins in their hands and a reek of powder-smoke about them. Lucy shrieked, imagining that they were Arkhangelsk, but they were Andringa’s men, come to make a stand in Three Dry Ships. Outside, as Borglum led his people through the miserable streets and up the hill, men were everywhere, dragging barricades across the gaps between sheds and cottages, setting up a demi-cannon on a tripod. The reversing landships scrabbled up the hill and into positions on its terraces. None went further than halfway up, or showed any sign of running back to London, let alone carrying hitchhikers when it went.
“What now then?” asked Master Fenster.
“Keep going,” said Borglum. “We can at least get this hill between us and whatever unpleasantness happens here. . .”
War horns were sounding as Fever and the others followed him uphill between the waiting ships. The slope was steep, and after the first thirty feet she stopped and paused for breath and looked back, just in time to see the northerners’ vanguard break from the smoke. Arkhangelsk infantry were milling between the oncoming vehicles, and dozens fell as the men who’d stationed themselves in Three Dry Ships opened fire. The landships on the hillside around her began to fire too. The Arkhangelsk ships faltered. Already a couple were in flames, but the northern foot-warriors kept coming, hard men in mail and wolfskin, much like the Morvishmen she’d met, fearless and keen for glory. Their battle cries rose above the noise of guns and engines as they charged into the little town, piling through windows and shot-holes into the old hulk where Fever and her friends had sheltered. Others swung past the town and started up the hill, driving Andringa’s men before them, letting off arquebuses and crossbows as they came. Master Fenster, running ahead of her, suddenly turned round and dropped his gun and fell. Fever tripped over him and someone stumbled over her, and a shell bursting further up the slope blinded her with its spray of dirt. By the time she crawled back to where Master Fenster lay he was dead.
She looked for Borglum and the others. There was only smoke, and the gaudy leaping light of a burning landship a little way off along the hill. Half the hillside seemed to have been blown into the sky and was pattering down in pieces all around. From below came the shouting voices of the warriors. She scrambled up and started running blindly, tripping on dead men and scattered packs. It sounded as if the sea was finally returning to Three Dry Ships; roaring down from the north in a storm-wave like the one that had once swamped Thursday Island and orphaned Arlo.
Someone grabbed her, but it was only Quatch, dragging her down into the doubtful shelter of a barricade made from empty crates and a broken door. Borglum crouched there too, and Lady Midnight. The dwarf said, “You want ter watch yourself, scamperin’ about in that Arkie coat; one of our brave boys’ll put a bullet in you.”
“Where are the others?’ she asked.
“Dunno,” said Borglum. He was loading a Bugharin he’d found somewhere, glaring out over the barricade into the smoke. “Everybody’s runnin’ this way and that. It’s all gone pear-shaped.”
“Master Fenster’s dead,” she said.
“Stalkers!” someone shouted, further down the hill.
Out of the drifts of smoke below they came, ghostly at first and then suddenly solid. A glint of gunlight on raised blades; the beams of green eyes slicing the smoke. The cry went up all along the London lines: “Stalkers!” A fortress a little way downhill was overrun, the Stalkers swarming over it like ants, men leaping from upper decks to escape them. From somewhere to the left a squad of Andringa’s Stalkers came hurrying slantwise across the slope of the hill. Battle-strimmers revved and snarled and for a moment it seemed they would drive their rivals back, but the mortal warriors of the north poured past them, leaving the Stalkers to fight each other. Through a tear in the smoke Fever glimpsed what looked like mossy boulders moving, and before she could say anything the mammoths were upon them.
These were not amiable mammoths like Carpet and Lump; these had been bred for size and fierceness, and armoured so heavily that they looked more like machines than animals. On their trunks and forelegs were long segmented sleeves of iron, rivets winking in the firelight. Their heads were hidden in spiked guards, their wayward tusks were tipped with sharpened steel, and they were half mad with terror and fury. Swinging their big heads from side to side they crashed through the knots of defenders, crushing anyone who stood before them, snatching up in their trunks those who tried to flee and flinging them away into the smoke.
“Borglum!” Fever shouted. “We have to run!”
“Run from them hairy bloggers?” Borglum shouted back. “Not likely. If they’re chucking mammoths at us then Andringa’s lads must really have mucked up their landships. We’ll win this yet.” He raised his gun, taking aim at the biggest mammoth he could see, a monster of a mammoth that had just appeared out of the smoke, galloping westward along the face of the hill. In its howdah a red mammoth skull had been mounted on a tall staff, fluttering with pennants. A Stalker stood there, and two armoured Arkhangelsk, and a man who waved his thin arms high above his silly hat, and another figure, slighter, all in white, with a cloud of rusty hair blown back. . .
Fever shoved Borglum’s rifle sideways just as it went off.
“What are you playing at, Fever Crumb?” he asked, reaching for a fresh bullet. “Whose side you on?”
“I know her, that girl,” said Fever. “That’s Cluny Morvish.” Even there, in that awful place, it felt good just to be saying Cluny’s name.
“That’s right,” Borglum said, more gently. “You’re fond of her.”
Fever nodded, and for a moment, as their eyes met, she thought he understood. Then something hummed past her like a hornet and punched him backwards. “Borglum! Borglum!” Lady Midnight shouted as he fell against her. A mammoth – not Cluny’s but another, still larger – was thundering up the slope towards their barricade, and men its howdah were firing guns down at them as it came. Without thinking, Fever reached for the rifle which Borglum had dropped. Without thinking, she pulled the bolt back, raised it to her shoulder, stood to take a better aim. As long as she didn’t think, her body knew exactly what to do; Godshawk had hunted mammoths and fought in battles of his own, and his memories were in her muscles and her nerves. She let him take charge for a moment as she squinted through the rifle’s sights, ignoring Quatch bellowing at her to get down, ignoring Lady Midnight’s wails of “Borglum!”
There was a little eyehole in the mammoth’s armour, with a little, bright, mad eye glinting out. Fever squeezed the trigger carefully and put a bullet through it, and felt an elation that was not her own as the beast reared up screaming, flailing at the air with its spiked forelegs, its hind feet trampling the marksmen who tumbled from its back. I must make sure to get its tusks, she thought, watching it crash down. What a trophy they will make! The thought was Godshawk’s, not her own, so she stuffed it down into the cellar of her mind and shut a door upon it and ran to where Lady Midnight cradled Borglum. He was shuddering, shuddering, but when he saw Fever bend over him he went still, smiled, said, “Duchess? That you? They told me you was. . .”
“Oh, Master Borglum,” she said, kneeling down beside him, but he was not there any more, and Lady Midnigh
t, weeping, laid him down and said, “We must leave. . .”
Light broke over them. An Arkhangelsk war-lamp was raking its beam through the smoke to dazzle the defenders and show the attackers what they were attacking. Out of the light came Stalkers, looking like black spiky cut-outs with their edges all nibbled away by the glare. Fever felt their green gaze brush her face as Lady Midnight caught her by one arm and pulled her away. “Come on, dearest, we must go now, or join poor Borglum in the Sunless Country. . .”
A Stalker kicked through the barricade. Quatch turned back to meet it; grabbed it by its metal face and wrenched its head off in a spray of nasty fluids. Its flailing body twisted free and killed him with a random swipe of its claws, dropping him on top of Borglum while Fever and Lady Midnight scurried up the hill. The neat lines of the battle had all gone now; there was fighting everywhere they looked: mammoths, landships, Stalkers, warriors, Andringa’s soldiers, an unexploded shell bounding downhill like a barrel. There was a steady roaring sound, no longer the noise of individual guns, just one long, dreadful din.
“Now you must guide me, Fever, dear,” shouted Lady Midnight. “This ain’t no Carnival of Knives and my eyes ain’t much good to me with all these fires and such to dazzle them.”
So Fever took her hand and they went together between blazing landships, past London Stalkers who had been re-killed and stood burning like man-shaped braziers. They reached the summit, but as they started down the far side they found battle in front of them too. Northerners had got round behind the hill somehow, moving on foot in small and silent groups between the thorn-bushes while the defenders were all busy with the main assault. A huge Suomi cut down a London officer just ahead of Fever and then turned to lunge at her, but there were no fires behind him, so he showed up bright to Lady Midnight, who found a dagger in her belt and flung it into his throat. He fell with a gurgle, and as they went past him they saw that the man he’d left on the ground was Captain Andringa, struggling to rise while a widening red stain soaked through his tunic. Lady Midnight stopped and heaved him up; swung him over her shoulders and went on stooped beneath his weight, ignoring his commands to go on and save herself. “He’s such a nice captain,” she said to Fever. “We can’t just leave him here to die or be lost.” She was determined to save someone from the battle, even if all her friends were gone.